Achtung Maybe: Germany market report

Historically one of the most robust live music markets in the world, Germany is not immune to the challenges facing the industry in 2024. IQ talks to those on the front line in a territory where pressures of rising costs has never been more keenly felt.

Germany remains the third-biggest live market in the world, after only the US and Japan. Its turnover is huge – more than €6bn annually from 300,000 events, with over 115m tickets sold [source: BDKV]. It contains markets within markets – Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt: all distinct, all mighty – and a massive infrastructure of diversified promoters, modern venues, and household-name festivals.

This is the kind of territory where Taylor Swift finds the time for seven shows of her Eras Tour, and where Adele is dropping in for ten concerts in a bespoke 80,000-capacity Munich stadium across August – a plan the singer herself, who hasn’t played in Europe in eight years, calls “a bit random but still fabulous”.

On a genre-by-genre basis, there are successes all around. Country is booming, schlager remains strong, and Germany’s domestic artists, not least its locally grown hip-hop acts, are now good for multiple nights in arenas. Nine German promoters – counting Live Nation, which appeared as a combined group – ranked in Pollstar’s global Top 100 by ticket sales in 2023.

“All the traffic that was backed up after Covid is really just done now, and we’re looking at fresh new touring and fresh new on-sales in the market,” says Semmel Concerts head of international booking Sina Hall.

“There’s a lot of good things happening and a lot of very healthy sales going on right now”

“People are definitely out, and they want adventure and to experience live and all the different aspects of it, whether that is an exhibition or a musical or a show. There’s a lot of good things happening and a lot of very healthy sales going on right now.”

But while the pandemic seems to have engendered a rolling wave of demand for big-name live entertainment, its fallout, and that of other local and regional complications, is still being felt in numerous ways.

Germany was the only G7 economy to shrink last year, in the teeth of a painful energy crisis, sluggish productivity, low public investment, and an aging population. For the live business, the sector-specific challenges are crowding in, too, chief among them the soaring costs troubling the business.

“I think the market in Germany has all different aspects,” says DEAG CEO Detlef Kornett. “It is good, and it is tough at the same time. When you look at the big brand names out there touring on their own, from AC/DC to Adele, they can ask for almost any price and do experiments never seen before. On the flipside, I think it is tough for small- and medium-sized bands, because costs have increased so much that touring or individual shows become a challenge.”

Most promoters, while broadly upbeat, also draw a distinction between touring and festivals – the former essentially thriving, the latter particularly exposed to mounting labour, production, energy, and talent costs.

“Artists are looking at getting more money out of touring, and the competition between promoters is getting harder and harder”

Are promoters sending out frantic distress signals? Not necessarily – the engine is still firing, the tickets are still selling, Germany is still a muscular market. But in a world that has had some unpredictable shocks in the past few years, there are clouds in the sky even on sunny days.

“I think the market’s become quite tight,” says Wizard Live managing director Oliver Hoppe. “I think the artists are looking at getting more money out of touring, and the competition between promoters is getting harder and harder. Everybody has increased costs; people have less money in their pocket. I’m not complaining, we’re doing quite good. But it’s just a lot of variables that you have to factor in. It feels a lot more like work than it did before the pandemic, I guess.”

Promoters
Germany houses some of Europe’s strongest and most industrious promoters, and these days, they move in packs.

Of the local corporates, CTS Eventim holds weighty stakes in some of Germany’s biggest players, including Semmel Concerts, FKP Scorpio, DreamHaus, Peter Rieger Konzertagentur, and heavyweight regional promoters including ARGO Konzerte, Dirk Becker Entertainment, and Promoters Group Munich – to add to venues such as the Lanxess Arena in Cologne and the Waldbühne in Berlin.

DEAG likewise has promoters and festival properties the length and breadth of the country, from Frankfurt’s Wizard Promotions and Munich’s Global Concerts to I-Motion in Mülheim-Kärlich, whose electronic festivals include Nature One in Kastellaun, Mayday in Dortmund, and Ruhr-in-Love in Oberhausen.

Live Nation GSA launched in 2016 under the father-and-son leadership of Marek and André Lieberberg, since adding a majority stake in Goodlive to the group.

Elsewhere, there remain independents, including Berlin’s MCT Agentur, which bridges everything from clubs to Rammstein and Robbie Williams shows; Hamburg’s Karsten Jahnke Konzertdirektion, busy with Taylor Swift and its annual Stadtpark shows; and Berlin’s Landstreicher Booking, with its great strength in domestic artists.

“This whole industry is in flux and has become a lot more complicated”

But the landscape has changed, and in more ways than simply the push towards consolidation. Traditionally, Germany had a very specific way of doing things, involving national and local promoters, and while that setup remains in place, in a globalised world some of those market-specific conventions are gradually being chipped away.

“It has become very complex,” says Kornett. “The German market always had a unique structure of touring companies and local promoters, but the lines are blurring. More and more, tours go direct without really involving a local promoter, and then there are the local promoters that develop into production and touring companies. This whole industry is in flux and has become a lot more complicated, but we intend to take advantage of that development.”

The discombobulated days of the immediate post-pandemic period, when promoters’ instincts didn’t seem to match the new rhythms of the market, have settled down now, but German shows still require a lot of marketing.

“We’re getting better at predicting how people are going to react and how certain things are going to do,” says Hall. “But if I compare our on-sales, for example, to the UK or the US, it feels like we still have a very long on-sale period. It feels like in the other markets, it’s got very, very short notice, like sometimes our big tours have been pushed out like two or three months in advance. And I feel Germany still needs that long on-sale phase.”

Semmel’s business is nonetheless moving forward on numerous fronts, its domestic roster including stadium shows for Herbert Grönemeyer and outdoor concerts for Roland Kaiser, as well as the acquisition of 1,800-capacity Metronom Theater in Oberhausen and the launch, with industry veteran Ralf Kokemüller, of new shows and musicals company Limelight Live Entertainment.

“A lot of smaller and medium artists are facing lower demand and massively higher touring costs”

Live Nation is also seeing heavy traffic. In addition to tours by Billie Eilish, Janet Jackson, Metallica, and Justin Timberlake this year (not forgetting those Adele shows with Austrian co-promoter Klaus Leutgeb), Live Nation presides over Lollapalooza Berlin, Munich’s Superbloom, HipHop Open in Stuttgart, the outgoing MELT in Gräfenhainichen, and versions of the Deutschrap-specific Heroes festival in Hanover, Allgäu, Freiburg, and Geiselwind.

At FKP, this year is a big one on all fronts, as it expands its remit from one of “music-focused promoter to cultural organiser,” in the words of CEO Stephan Thanscheidt, having added exhibitions, family entertainment, comedy, and spoken word to its music portfolio. But the music remains strong.

“2024 surely is a special year for us,” says Thanscheidt. “We’re going strong with seven stadium shows from Taylor Swift and a concert series at the prestigious tech fair IFA in Berlin. Our summer festivals, headlined by Ed Sheeran and other legends, can also be considered top-class, resulting in high demand despite challenging times: Southside has just sold out and Hurricane is very close to its capacity as well.”

But as Thanscheidt is well aware, promoters can’t afford to just be about the big stuff, and there are plenty of challenges further down.

“Promoting the biggest names in the industry is a privilege but far from being the entirety of our work,” he says. “A lot of smaller and medium artists are facing lower demand and massively higher touring costs. Venues are also negatively affected by the explosion of costs in recent years. If we want to keep Germany among the biggest music markets worldwide, policymakers must take further steps to protect and foster the ever more important live sector.”

“Urban artists in Germany are doing a few things that are quite groundbreaking in the live business”

Karsten Jahnke Konzertdirektion is taking on the Taylor Swift shows in Hamburg, as well as its own 30-show Stadtpark series, this time featuring The Smile, Alice Cooper, Gossip, Sean Paul and others. But in other respects, managing director Ben Mitha believes we can expect a slightly quieter summer than in 2023 – partly due to the Euro football tournament and, less directly, the tour-dampening effect of the Olympics in France – and anticipates a notably busy autumn.

“The football starts middle of June and runs till middle of July, so you’re pretty much missing a full month,” says Mitha. “And also, once the tournament has started, public attention will be leaning very strongly towards it, so I think it’s better to stay away from that period with your bigger outdoor shows.”

Wizard Live celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, with a busy slate of shows by AC/DC, Toto, Bruce Dickinson, Scorpions, Judas Priest, and others. The company recently divided its operation into four divisions: shows and touring, marketing, brand & music connector, and artist development.

Managing director Oliver Hoppe says the business has changed in numerous ways, from weighing the importance of streaming for emerging acts to cutting through with cash-poor, choice-rich gig-goers. Meanwhile, he notes, artists require different things of their promoters. He points to Germany’s healthy, rule-breaking domestic urban sector as an example of the business in flux.

“Urban artists in Germany are doing a few things that are quite groundbreaking in the live business,” says Hoppe. “Some of them are even moving away from having a promoter at all and just saying, ‘Okay, we have so-and-so many followers, we know that if we press a button, we can instantly sell out. There’s literally no risk in putting on the shows, so what do we actually need a promoter for?’”

The opportunity for promoters, suggests Hoppe, is to market their expertise in new, modular ways. “Some artists need more help in marketing; some just need somebody to take care of logistics for them, like a production team would; some need help with legal or ticketing. It depends on where the artist is in their cycle. But I think the full package is not going to be relevant to everyone in the market, moving forward.”

“I think we are very fortunate that we are an independent. We are like a speedboat – we can make individual trips”

Max Wentzler of Berlin-based independent Z|Art also questions the popular conception that smaller shows necessarily struggle for an audience, putting the blame at the door of rigid promoting strategies.

“We have artists selling 100 tickets, 1,000 tickets, 5,000 tickets, and they are all doing well,” he says, pointing to a roster that includes Brakence, Bleachers, Lola Young, Olivia Dean, Ben Howard, and Jalen Ngonda.

“If you apply one way of working to so many artists, which is what I would say the big ticket-company-driven promoters do, then it’s difficult to innovatively come up with strategies for how and where to promote different artists. But that’s where I think we are very fortunate that we are an independent. We are like a speedboat – we can make individual trips. And the others are like the Royal Caribbean, which takes five days to turn around.”

Another promoter questioning the status quo is veteran event producer and talent booker Marc Kirchheim, who has made a career out of corporate and private events, from televised shows at the Brandenburg Gate with acts that include Bon Jovi, to last October’s show with Robbie Williams at Messe Essen for 10,000 employees of German multinational energy firm RWE. He believes too many international artists and their agents have priced themselves out of such shows, and is keen to engage.

“The German market is not only the tours, the ticketed shows, it is also a lot of corporate, private and public events,” says Kirchheim. “But after the pandemic, prices have exploded worldwide, and the big acts are demanding fees that no longer correspond to reality.”

The big tourers and their management should give more consideration to the corporate and private sector, even if their agents aren’t enthused, he suggests. “Corporate and private events are always valuable for international star acts,” he says. “When there are no record sales, just small payments from Spotify and co and indoor tour productions, they require new sources of income. But with the fees that have been asked for since Covid, the international top acts are no longer affordable.”

Festivals
For a bluntly revealing insight into the challenges facing European festivals, look no further than the announcement in late-May by Goodlive’s MELT festival that this year’s event will be the last, after a run that began in 1997.

“Despite our commitment and efforts in recent years, we recognise that the original MELT no longer fits into the German festival market and cannot withstand the developments of recent years without radically altering the festival concept,” said Goodlive director Florian Czok.

“The challenge, not only for Goodlive but all German festivals, is that we can’t raise the ticket price every year – we simply can’t do it”

Even amid a backdrop of well-founded fears for the wider festival business, the reaction among German promoters made it clear that, whatever we might think a doomed festival looks like, MELT – which takes its final bow in July at the Ferropolis open-air museum, near Gräfenhainichen, Saxony-Anhalt, with Sampha, James Blake, Sugababes, DJ Koze, and Romy on the bill – wasn’t it.

“For ages, MELT festival was like the go-to hipster, trendy, buzz-act festival in Germany – it was really like one of the GOAT festivals out there,” says Ben Mitha. “It’s such a lighthouse in the festival landscape, and now it has to close its doors forever. It’s quite shocking, and I hear from a bunch of festivals out there that they are really struggling this year.”

There’s no mystery to the problems festivals face this year, in Germany or anywhere else – costs have soared on all sides, big-hitting talent has been hard to nail down, and the market can’t support price rises that genuinely reflect the mounting cost of staging big events.

“Costs are rising, year-on-year, by at least 10% to 15%,” says Goodlive’s Fruzsina Szép. “The challenge, not only for Goodlive but all German festivals, is that we can’t raise the ticket price every year – we simply can’t do it.

“We all thought costs would go down after Covid, but they keep increasing. And sponsorship income is not rising by 10% to 15% every year. I think sometimes, as festival owners, people think there is always more juice in the lemon, but the lemon is totally dry.”

Germany boasts a giant festival scene that includes rock monoliths such as Wacken Open Air, Rock am Ring, and Rock im Park; electronic institutions such as Time Warp, Mayday, Love Family Park, and Nature One; and indie all-rounders including Lollapalooza Berlin and twin FKP festivals Hurricane and Southside; not to mention vigorous newcomers such as Munich’s Superbloom and small-but-beautiful indie darlings such as Appletree Garden in Diepholz and Watt En Schlick in Varel.

“We have seen cost increases up to 50% across all areas of live culture, mainly due to higher prices for energy, resources, and personnel”

Tricky conditions aside, the market is, in many respects, still a strong one. How optimistic are the big brands?

“My answer can only be two-fold,” says Thanscheidt, whose German festivals include M’era Luna in Hildesheim, Highfield in Großpösna, Elbjazz in Hamburg, and Deichbrand in Cuxhaven. “Of course, our team can’t wait for the festival summer, and given our lineups and commercial success, we’re sure to have set the right course for the immediate future.

“At the same time, we have seen cost increases up to 50% across all areas of live culture, mainly due to higher prices for energy, resources, and personnel. Anyone who compares this dynamic with actual ticket prices immediately realises that we cannot and do not want to pass on the enormous additional costs to our guests.

“Our size as a group currently allows us to produce in such a way that attending a festival remains as affordable as possible. Not excluding anyone from live culture for financial reasons is the most important challenge of our time, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult due to the small margins and high risk of our industry.”

DEAG’s Kornett is reasonably confident about demand, the group having recently announced sales of 4.9m tickets for its 2024 festivals across Europe, up 38% year-on-year. But he is concerned about the impact of increasingly unpredictable weather events on the summer months, which he regards as all but inevitable in 2024.

“Germany has been hit really hard by adverse weather, and it’s a matter of when, not if, there will be adverse impacts of the weather in Germany this year. It has become a common phenomenon,” he says, though on DEAG’s account, he strikes a positive note particularly for DEAG festivals.

“For festivals, the market has been relatively good,” says Kornett. “It has been harder to get a decent bill together, get the right acts for a given festival – it is a matter of acts being available and on the road. But there’s a massive amount of festivals in the summer months, and the consumer wouldn’t go if they didn’t like it.”

“A lot of the festivals, especially the big ones, seem to have been in a bit of an identity crisis, post-pandemic”

Some suggest that the complications and cancellations of the Covid years have left festivals struggling for direction. “A lot of the festivals, especially the big ones, seem to have been in a bit of an identity crisis, post-pandemic,” says Wentzler at Z|Art.

And as tastes shift, there is a strong case to be made for new concepts. Goodlive’s Superbloom, launched in 2022 under the stewardship of then-former (and recently returned) Lollapalooza Berlin festival director Szép, is a recent market entrant that has been widely embraced as offering something fresh.

The imperative, Szép suggests, is to create new and compelling propositions for a changing audience that might not be attracted to traditional festivals. While she stresses that the event is not aimed exclusively at women – Calvin Harris, Sam Smith, Burna Boy, and The Chainsmokers are on the bill – there is clear evidence that Superbloom is filling a new niche. Last year, it sold 50,000 tickets, and this year, three months out from its September slot, it was more than halfway there and selling faster than in 2023.

“With Superbloom, we have somehow created a live brand that people want, especially young women,” she says. “Last year, almost 70% of our audience was female, and when we communicate with our fans, we hardly receive any aggressive or negative feedback. They say they felt super-safe, and they really appreciated our programmes about awareness and inclusion. I never would have thought that this philosophy that was important for me would make such a huge impact already, in two years.”

Evidently, festival success stories aren’t defined by their genre. Stuttgart’s jazzopen celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, with headliners including Sam Smith, Sting, and Lenny Kravitz, plus jazz legends such as Lee Ritenour, Billy Cobham, and Marcus Miller in four venues across ten days, selling 55,000 tickets and bringing in another 10,000 for its open stages.

“About 30% of our €7m annual budget comes from sponsorship by brands”

“While unfortunately a number of European independent festivals cannot survive anymore, jazzopen is on a good track,” says promoter and director Jürgen Schlensog of Opus Live.

“Of course, we are faced with increasing price levels for artists and production costs. However, we have been able to build a strong sponsorship pyramid in the last ten years. About 30% of our €7m annual budget comes from sponsorship by brands such as Mastercard, Mercedes-Benz, Allianz, and more. We are cashless and climate-neutral, and we are proud to be independent and ready for the future.”

And a very different German festival with a clear appeal to its chosen market is Superstruct’s Wacken. The 34-year-old metal institution was plagued by bad weather in 2023 and still, days later, sold out 85,000 tickets for this year’s event in just four-and-a-half hours.

“We are more than grateful and humbled for your trust,” the festival’s promoters wrote in an open letter to fans. “Especially after the difficult start of the festival this summer… we really appreciate that the community stands by us and sticks together.” Other festivals will no doubt be hoping for the same.

Venues
Inevitably, the story of larger German venues is one of a balancing act between healthy demand and punishing increases in costs. Looking through the first lens, the rise and rise of mass live entertainment, especially at the volume end of the scale, is hard to deny.

“The market is constantly evolving and is highlighting new genres that can fill a venue of our capacity”

“The market is constantly evolving and is highlighting new genres that can fill a venue of our capacity,” says Ole Hertel, Anschutz Entertainment Group vice president and managing director, who runs Berlin’s freshly rebranded 17,000-capacity Uber Arena.

“A decade ago, gaming moved into the live event business, then K-Pop took over. Lately, we have international comedians touring German arenas, darts are played before 10,000 people, podcasters are selling out single shows, and German hip-hop acts are selling out consecutive shows – unthinkable a decade ago.”

But with big buildings, of course, come huge costs. The 20,000-capacity Lanxess Arena in Cologne is one of the cornerstones of the German circuit and reliably ranks as the best-attended arena in the country. The arena’s CEO Stefan Löcher reports a strong year so far, with the men’s handball final and 15 sold-out Cologne Carnival events of its own in the immediate rear-view mirror, and incoming shows including Justin Timberlake and Thirty Seconds to Mars.

“The year 2024 feels great so far,” says Löcher. “After the pandemic years and the numerous delayed tour starts due to the energy crisis, it feels like pre-Covid times since last year.

“But I think the entire industry is noticing the increased costs, especially in the tour business. And of course, with a venue of our size, we also have a huge new burden when it comes to energy costs. That’s why it’s important for us to become more efficient in all areas in good time. Of course, that won’t happen overnight.”

“German arenas are increasingly focusing on sustainability”

A new venue in Munich, greenlit in 2022 by the city council but not yet constructed, proposes to be Germany’s first climate-neutral arena, with all its energy generated and supplied onsite via solar panels, geo-thermal energy, and district heating.

Arena managing director Lorenz Schmid reports that the project is moving forward, its plans having been presented to the planning and design advisory committee in the nearby town of Freising in early June.

“The Design Advisory Committee is an official part of the approval process and plays a central role in ensuring urban planning and architectural quality,” says Schmid. “They praised the current planning and gave their approval to continue with these plans. This is a big step and another milestone for us.”

The Munich Arena is only the most notable exponent of a sector-wide trend towards green upgrades and energy initiatives.

“German arenas are increasingly focusing on sustainability, including the implementation of energy-efficient technologies, waste-reduction programmes, and sustainable sourcing of materials,” says Steve Schwenkglenks, VP and MD of Barclays Arena in Hamburg, which is in the process of switching to LED lighting and last year established its own in-house reusable cup-washing facility.

“These efforts are aimed at reducing the environmental impact and appealing to a more eco-conscious audience,” he says.

The Uber Arena, formerly the Mercedes-Benz Arena, is in the midst of its own LED transition programme, which currently stands at 90% complete. Also in the works are an application for AGF’s A Greener Arena certification, the installation of an EV charging station in July, a contract with an outside company to recycle the venue’s paper towels, and the return of bees to the arena roof after a two-year hiatus.

“Long term, we have to evaluate how we source our energy consumption to run a sustainable business”

And while such measures are clearly important, AEG’s Hertel acknowledges that major work remains to be done on the fundamental question of how to power arenas.

“Short term, we constantly look for ways to save energy in our day-to-day operation,” he says. “Long term, we have to evaluate how we source our energy consumption to run a sustainable business.”

In Düsseldorf, the D.LIVE group operates the Merkur Spiel-Arena (in fact a stadium, with a capacity of 52,500), the Mitsubishi Electric Halle (7,500), and PSD Bank Dome (13,500 or 11,000 seated, with the option to reconfigure to 5,500).

Acts and events playing across D.LIVE’s venues this year include Coldplay, Niall Horan, Disney On Ice, Ne-Yo, Bryan Adams, and Troye Sivan, and plans are afoot for the D.LIVE Open Air Park – a space for up to 80,000 spectators that will be up and running from summer 2025. “Over the last [few] years, we invested more than €30m in all our venues,” says Daniela Stork, D.LIVE executive director of booking, ticketing and special events.

“Among other things, we converted the lighting in all venues to LED. In the Merkur Spiel-Arena, we also integrated new full-colour upper- and lower-tier lighting. We have redesigned the VIP areas in the Merkur Spiel-Arena and the PSD Bank Dome, and we have renovated the backstage areas in the PSD Bank Dome and the Mitsubishi Electric Halle so that not only our guests but also the acts and production teams feel at home with us.”

There’s more to the German venue scene than just arenas and stadiums, of course, though it is apparent that the success of the larger rooms means there is less money in the market at other levels – especially the lowest ones. As in all Europe’s thriving cities, German clubs are under threat from landlords, developers, and energy bills, but they are also struggling to get a share of consumers’ entertainment budgets.

“Five years ago, if you put on a show that was not the hottest show in town, 100 or 250 people would still find their way to the show by accident,” says Hoppe. “And that is completely gone. Now, you either have really strong sales, or you have really bad sales, especially in that segment.

“First of all, people don’t have that kind of money anymore. Second of all, people that do have that kind of money have invested in premium shows that now cost 50% more than they did before. Also, I think people like their couch. And those are all the little bricks in the wall we have to navigate in our business at the moment.”

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DEAG enters Spanish pop/rock market

DEAG has continued its international expansion by entering the Spanish rock/pop market with the launch of subsidiary Get Rock Live (GRL).

The German-headquartered giant, which has previously run Christmas Garden events in Barcelona, Madrid, Málaga and Valencia, is setting up the new firm in Barcelona in collaboration with experienced promoter Pierre Sabbag.

Sabbag has organised shows by the likes of Alice Cooper, Kiss, Ozzy Osbourne, Scorpions, Aerosmith and Iron Maiden, as well as working with Spanish acts such as Extremoduro and Marea.

Inma Sepulveda, who has been active in the production and execution of major events for over 20 years, will also join the team.

“DEAG continues to expand successfully in Europe and UK,” says DEAG executive board member Detlef Kornett. “Spain is a highly exciting market that offers us great growth potential. We will gradually expand our portfolio of events in the coming months and years by offering visitors hundreds of concerts and shows, first-class other entertainment and generate all along additional business for the DEAG Group.”

“We want to position concerts events and festivals even bigger and more internationally over time”

The first GRL events are scheduled for 2024 and 2025, with around 100 events planned for that period. The company says the expansion of its business activities in Spain will result in synergy effects, including the development of new formats and locations.

“DEAG is excellently positioned internationally,” adds Sabbag. “We want to position concerts events and festivals even bigger and more internationally over time. I am very much looking forward to our very close collaboration.”

Founded in Berlin in 1978, DEAG’s other core markets are Germany, Great Britain, Switzerland, Ireland and Denmark. The company, which went private in 2021, recently revealed it was examining all equity financing options, including a possible stock market listing, to further accelerate its growth.

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